it's a good start
I completely agree with Zertech, needs lower face count and set smooth. I'm sure your unfixable problem is nowhere near as complex as your making it out to be.
First things first, set the viewport to textured, if you see any transparent faces, their normals are backwards. select them and hit 'flip normals'. Secondly, your gonna want to clean up your edges. Set the whole thing to smooth. Select the face loop that makes up the main cylinder shape, then hit 'split'(in the mesh tools panel). See the difference? What you just did is break the mesh into smaller parts, so it's not smoothing the whole thing, only the individual pieces. Do that to the rest of the model where ever you want a sharp edge.
Play with it. Practice it. Perfect it.
~CD
