I'd really like to make some badass custom gear, but I just don't really ....err.....well......"get it". Sure I've done the occassional "Superior" upgrade on a warhammer or axe, but surely there are cooler ways to getting awesome weapons and armor? I also don't really understand how to enchant a weapon, either.

You get your smith skill up by making weapons. It's easy get some leather by killing some animals for skin. Turn into leather and leather strips. Make same leather armor and there you go your skill goes up. You can make any item on the list as long as its highlighted, if it's not then below the item you'll see what you need in order to create that item. Then you go get, find it exploring or buy it. There are very easy ways to get your smith skill up very quickly. Just make a ton of iron daggers or leather braces, you don't need much at all to create these items. Be warned that you may become to powerful by leveling up smithing to quickly. I call doing it that way cheating. I have been known to sit there and make a few extra daggers because I had the materials to make them but still it's called cheating and is not reccomended. Then when you start to level smithing up you can start spending perk points in the skill to make different types of weapons and armor. The left side of the perk tree is for light armor and the right is for heavy armor. Plus each side has weapons for everyone to use so if your in it to be a full blacksmith you might want to go up both sides of the tree.

Enchanting. Find an enchanting table. Easy access one is in Dragonsreach in Whiterun. You disenchant an item you have in your inventory to learn the enchantment, the item is destroyed by doing this. Once the enchantment is learned you can pick an item and an enchantment you have learned and enchant that item. You need soil gems to do this the bigger souls the more powerful the enchantment becomes. Also you eventually start to put perk in your enchantment tree to make the enchantments more powerful. If you go to an enchanter it should explain how to use it for the first time.

Ah so THAT'S what the soul gems are used for. Hah. Awesome, thank you!

...and also just by improving existing weapons and armor. I found that by limiting myself to just upgrading the loot armor & weapons from my travels before I sold them for gold that my smithing leveled at a reasonable rate (at level 32 its now 95), and it made the loot more valuable.

Yes and also for recharging enchanted weapons.
Here is a tip. You can take a cheap dagger and make it very expensive by putting an enchantment on it with the weekest soul gem, petty soul. The price goes up an insane amount when you do this. Make money very quickly. Again I'll say if your really trying to role play try not to do things like this. It will ruin te experience for you. It's no fun being a tank that destroys anything and that is untouchable. Don't forget if the game gets too easy or too hard change the difficulty settings.

Very true. Anything you do in the blacksmith area will get your smithing up with the exception of two things smelting and tanning. They don't do anything for you.

u can improve ur smithing skill with creating iron dagger at any lvl.. i created just iron dagger to improve smithing lvl 50 to 80.. at 80 lvl created ebony armors and upgrading them then my smithing skill reached to 90 lvl. spend about 1.5 or 2k gold and buy iron igrot as much as u can.. disenchant items and some minor enchantings will improve ur enchanting skill easily.

I mainly made iron daggers in order to get my smithing skill to 100. I also filled out the smithing constellation as I levelled up. I've also found several items that give smithing bonuses: a smithing ring and necklace, both giving a +15% bonus, and a +20% set of Dwarven gauntlets. My Daedric sword and Dragonbane (katana) are about as sharp as they can get, but I'm hoping to find more stuff for smithing bonuses. I'm also starting to experiment with enchanting, and now my Dragonscale armor gives me +20 Stamina.

You do lots of http://pix.playground.ru/download/gallery/1193573/b9c2649f1fbb1c7156e3ba50e7fa2fca.jpg to become a good smith. And eventually you get to make http://pix.playground.ru/download/gallery/276634/849737dccb86dd975b9b22cf84e5f545.jpg or better.

571 pts of damage?! I need more bonuses.