Quote: "thanks, i've been doing high-poly models for ages, i just can't texture properly so i can't get any sort of detail in without going over the top, i'll keep that handle idea in mind though"
AS previously suggested, your poly count looks way too high. You may want to spend a bit of time learning low poly modeling techniques, which are quite different.
UVW mapping is pretty easy, if very time consuming, once you understand the basics. Basically you are projecting the texture onto the model, so imagine a flat sheet place beside your model. That flat sheet is your canvas to paint a texture onto, and it projects onto the model. Now that only covers one angle, which is where the time consuming comes in. In most 3D packages you would select logically grouped faces, then apply a planar UVW mapping to those faces along a normal that makes the most sense for the orientation of the selected faces. Usually you would then enter into the uvw editor to move the newly mapped faces to an isolated area of the map, so you can repeat the process and fit all the faces onto a single, or atleast fewer, texture maps.
Keep at it, looks like you have the right idea.
