How do we charge weapons? It seemed much easier in Oblivion.

I have numerous magic weapons. I did discover that you can use a soul gem but is there any other way . Also only soul gems with souls in them. How do I fill the soul gems?

Well if you do have a filled soul gem, you can go into inventory, then weapons, highlight the weapon in question, and then (on mine, think it might be default) you can press 'T' (on PC) and then choose the soul gem you want to use from a list and confirm. I don't know other ways, unless Enchanters walking around can still do it like in earlier games.

You can either buy or find filled soul gems or you can cast "Soul Trap" and then kill something within I think 60 seconds (may be 30 actually but I think 60). The soul will go into the smallest soul gem you have that can hold it by default I think.

Now what I'd like to know is why I can't find the charge counter they had in Morrowind that let me know at a glance on the HUD how many uses a weapon or armor had left before needing a recharge. All I can remember now is when I used the last one in my mace, I got a popup saying it was empty.

Soul gems are in fact the only way to charge an enchanted weapon.

There is a small blue bar that appears over your magic or stamina bar that gives a rough representation of how many charges are left within the weapon. From what i can tell it only pops up when you are actually hitting something with the weapon though.

"Now what I'd like to know is why I can't find the charge counter they had in Morrowind that let me know at a glance on the HUD how many uses a weapon or armor had left before needing a recharge. All I can remember now is when I used the last one in my mace, I got a popup saying it was empty."

Yes it was a lot easier in Oblivion where you just go up to a counter and pay someone to charge them. I have been playing the Elderscrolls for years, since before Oblivion. But I have never caught a soul in a charm. Is it easy in Skyrim? Do I need a spell and if so where do i get the right spell to cast?

There are two options to capturing the soul of a creature within a soul gem but first a little lesson in mechanics:

Soul Gems can only hold a soul of corresponding or lesser size. The size of the soul is categorized by the general difficulty of the creature. There are 6 sizes of soul gem: Petty, Lesser, Common, Greater, Grand, and Black from smallest to largest. Examples of proper soul sizes:

• Petty-Skeever
• Lesser-Draug
• Common-Troll
• Greater-Giant
• Grand- Dragon Priest
• Black- Humanoid

Obviously, the larger the soul gem the more uncommon they tend to be with blacks bordering on all but impossible to find (at level 31 I have found 3) due to their necromantic nature and the fact that they are considered illegal in most parts of Tamriel. Black soul gems are the only soul gem that can house the soul of a humanoid (khajit, argonian, elf, human, orc).

The larger the soul gem, the greater enchantment they can place on an item and the more charges they can refill.

All that being said back to your two options. You must first of all have an appropriate (or larger) size soul gem in your inventory. Option 1 is to cast a "Soul Trap" spell on an enemy then kill that enemy within the allotted time (typically 30-60 seconds). The other option is to have a weapon with "soul binding" abilities on it. Abilities such as this will be listed on the weapons menu stats. Typically these will have a smaller amount of time to kill the enemy in but should not be concerning since you will likely kill the creature with that same weapon. Once the creature is killed you will see an animation of blue lights and in the top right hand corner of your screen it will say whether or not you successfully harvested the soul depending on whether or not you had a proper sized empty soul gem.

So the next question is where can I find a spell to capture a soul in Skyrim? I have played this game for years, but have never found a need to. Now I wish I had, being forced to, so I can charge my weapons.

Well I BELIEVE that you can buy the spell from the Jarl's court wizard in Whiterun, the first actual city you come to. Just buy the spell tome and learn the spell. Shouldn't cost more than 200 septims.

If you are using a weapon with a soul trap enchantment (one with kill creature in 5 seconds), does the creature have to die within 5 seconds of you attacking it, or within 5 seconds of attacking it with that weapon? Can i damage it with spells, and then hit it with the weapon at the end to trap the soul?

You must kill the target within the time limit AFTER being hit by the spell/weapon for example:
(5 second Soul Bind on a weapon)
HIT!
1sec
2sec
3sec Target Dead
4sec
5sec
This would be a successful soul capture. It's suggested that if you are interested in creating a soul binding weapon put the time limit to 1 second. You will get maximum charges this way and the target dying will almost 100% of the time be within 1 second of your last hit.

Ok cool. Thank you.

MACE OF MOLUG BAL!!!!! Best weapon of the game so far. damage magicka/stamina 25, soul trap up to 3 seconds. And yes, the weapon's charge bar is above the magicka bar, took me forever to figure that out. Azura's star (the black version) makes soul capturing infinitely easier, by the way. I just got the black star, which captures, surprise, black souls, and it never goes away

Chillrend=best wep of the game. If you improve it, and you have good enough one handed, it does 80+ damage. also keep in mind that in terms of speed. sword>axe>mace. Light-weight glass sword with 80+ damage and a chance of paralysis. hell yeah!

Where do you get that weapon? I would like that as well.

actually daedric weps are the best. but..... chillrend can be found while doing the thieves guild questline. its in mercers house in the very bottom room of his house.
daedra=better. i pretty much one shot every thing with these things.