this looks awesome, glad i read through the post
love the walk through on how you problem solved the coils, any luck on normal mapping them? im glad to see that such an amazing modeller isn't the best at texturing, haha, i love to model myself but i usually fail when it comes to texturing

question for you, well two,
1. what lighting setup did you use because it produced a lovely render
2. how did you create the perfect holes in the rectangle the coils went through?

thanks