baggins, thanks a lot for the advice.  It took me a little while but I think I got a decent looking glow on the blade now.  I more-or-less learned how to do material groups thanks to this too. hah

Also, for anyone else reading this, I also had to set the "highlight size" and "transparency falloff" to zero to make it actually look like it's glowing.  Before I set those to zero it just looked like a long, bright green cylinder.  I may play around with some more settings, and maybe add a little more to my cylinder later.  Maybe I can get it looking even better. :D