This is just an idea I had a long time ago, in a shower far, far away. I'd been thinking how cool it would be to put on a Star Wars production in school (purely hypothetically) and I was trying to figure out how to make lightsabers work (this was long before I knew about polycarbonate blades and modular hilt systems).

Anyway, the first thing I considered was using a paint that glowed under UV lighting, so that if a weak one was shone on the stage, the sabers might light up, even if not much, and even if you'd only really get Windu purple (you'll be realising about now why this stayed as a pipe dream). It would, however, allow the use of strong metal blades that could be used for duelling (again, I didn't know about the wonders of polycarb at this point).

Then I thought, how could you get the cool sparks that fly when the sabers clash or strike something (especially evident in the video game Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast). This was obvious: use some sort of ignition compound, in powder form, that would spark when struck. I was thinking of some kind of gunpowder derivative, maybe, I'm sure I've heard of/seen something like it, that acts like a sparkler when it's bashed.

Anyhow, to get to the point after half an hour's worth of reading, I was wondering if this would be possible with EL/LED blades; that is, to use a compound that would spark on impact? It'd have to be recoated after every duel, I'll grant, probably would be opaque, and would likely leave some horrible residue on the blade afterwards, and that's without even thinking about getting the damn stuff to stick to the blade, if the damn stuff even exists.

I guess I could have saved a lot of pixels by just asking: "Is this idea feasible at all? And is there any point to it?" I'll repeat myself and say that this is purely an idea I had, and not something I've researched or thought about more than that one time when I was in the shower.