Ive always had my best luck either with using a loft and oval segments, or just poly modeling it. Id try the loft first off tho - get your profile down and then you can rotate and scale to get the right shape, then attach to a hub object or something.
I usually start off with a disc for the base (where the blades come together) and then extrude that out with a good number of segments. Then use soft selection (or manually) to squash the other end of your tube down, and then manually adjust the positions to form the shape. Then twist.
Nice, ya just what he did. Although I would have started from a box probably, but then would have done the same type of bend like that or with the modifier.
That was a real quick version. Keep in mind that a propeller blade is just a wing. So each blade should be wing-shaped in profile, with the leading edge thicker/more rounded, and the trailing edge thinned out to an edge.
Replies
-N
ETA: Super quick:
It has a lot of options to dial in various shapes and tweaks, but nothing you couldn't do with standard modifiers.
Unfortunately it doesn't look like it's been updated in a while. I have it working in my copy of max 8, but haven't tried it in later versions.