hi there...first off u may have a chance of your pictures been removed....640/480 sizes only.
now to make it more smooth u could maybe sect all the faces that are the area u want smooth then got to editpolys extract.Or use the split polytool to add more edges then pull thoses edges to create a rounder shape.
The blotches u talk about is called artifacts usually cause or not enough final gather rays in ure scene try using the distance tool and get your distance of the entire saber(example)
saber=19 so divide by 10=1.9 <Max radius
then divide 1.9 by 10 for min radius =0.19
and give you scene maybe 1000 rays. u know they can go up to even more than the 1024 from the slider u can put 90.000 if u wanted.
Hope this helps.
Oh and it looks pretty cool!!!