Last week at work I saw someone asking about creating UVs for some shoelaces and I've had this tutorial for unwrapping a tube for a while now. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the thread where the question it was posted on (possibly a different site) so I'm going got post the link to it here.

http://www.trigraphica.com/New_Unwrap.html

Be advised that this is an old tutorial (7.5 I think) and there were some issues that were not covered because of time, but it should be enough for anyone to understand the basics.

Yeah thats great technique for all tube-like objects.
Last step (about Freezing modelling stack & filtering point to get rid of disconnected components) can be done diffrently.
If you freeze only your UV, you can delete your disconnecting ops in modelling stack. So you're back to original model with new UVs. And since you didn't use any filter/welding ops, you're sure model is untouched.

Great tut Good job and thanks!