WIP, power sword lightning effect

I have attempted to paint a lightning like effect in red through to yellow on my sergeants power sword.  I started by edge highlighting in dark red, then washing that twice with nuln oil to get it nice a dark. After that I highlighted the edges back up to the original dark red colour.

Having put the highlights in red on the edges I put a series of short sharp strokes in red, quite thickly, down the centre of the sword.  With these done I progressively got thinner and brighter highlights in the middle of those strokes, working up to yellow.  I put a glaze of bright red over the whole sword, this blends it all together a bit but does mute the final yellow highlights so I think that I will go back and put them in to really give it some punch.

So what do people think?  Was it a successful experiment or should I try something else?  Any comments, hints or tips are greatly appreciated so please feel free to leave a comment.