Shrew, play around with darkening your diffuse a lot and lighting up your specular equally. Metal's surface info is in the spec, not the diffuse -- a blade with no direct lighting will be dark and formless.
That's a really bad render for showing off a model. :( Please consider using a dark diffuse with moderate spec and gloss. From what I can see it looks pretty good.
@Vonberg - love the rocks so far! Not very productive this weekend, however I did make a couple of tiling textures, including this wood (with normal and spec) for the beams and table etc
Thanks 3shold! Here is the new shot with the Spec in there. I was trying to keep it looking just slightly scuffed up, do you think it still needs more variation in the Diffuse?
Nice work. Those textures look amazing. I'm especially liking that veiny texture on the first one. Is that rainbow color in the spec how you got the textures to look iridescent?