Quote - I must not be doing something right, because the only change I'm noticing is the handle turning gray.  I load the grayscale image in the Textures tab, go back to Materials and click the Spec button in the Map To tab but that's what it gives me. 

I'll try to help you out with the Spec Map. Sounds like, if your handle color is turning gray, it's being applied to the 'Col' map. I realize it is confusing at first, but once you start learning your way around, you find out how much you can do with Blender. I've added a PDF Version to the Tut. The link to the PDF is at the end of the Tutorial. (Cleaned up my spelling too.) Sword Tutorial w/ PDF Version at the bottom

Reddog9
Tutorials, Samples and Models
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