Thank you all for the feedback! I always wuss out with color variations, but I'll try to up the ante! Also, I've never done a rectangular UV map before, but I can see why that would be an improvement on the optimization. Next sword (coming soon) will include a wireframe too.
I like that you are committed to do all of these swords, and you are coming along nicely. Maybe a darker background for the presentations of every sword would be nice so that the highlights can be better seen. Also a wireframe shot on each sword would be good. But I think that you can up the contrast on each of your…