I recently re-downloaded Gizmodian's Shell of the Artifice, and I'd like to use the punching dagger as a primary weapon, but I'm a bit anol and can't get over the way punching daggers sheathe in Oblivion. In the readme, Gizmodian says she can't do anything about the problem (which I knew to begin with.)

And then I realized we were both wrong. If the model was spun in a direction that would make it look ridiculous when drawn, it could sheathe correctly. Then, a simple script like the one Nicoroshi uses for his flaming scimitars would allow the game to flip between the two models of the dagger, so it would always look correct.

I can handle the scripting. My question is, how difficult would it be to spin the model, what (free) program could do it, and/or where could I find a tutorial for it?

Alternately, would anyone like to spin it for me if it's a quick process so I can get on with the part I know how to do?

Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

You'd need Blender, if you want to go the free route. You could spin it in Nifskope (also free), but you need to rotate the collision as well and I usually find that rotating a collision mesh doesn't work too well. You could try it, but I suspect you'll need Blender.