EXPERIMENT: Heat weapons

Facing down a horde of little 'Nid buggers?  Orcs got you down? You're gonna want a few flame throwers. We've all seen that discoloration that metal (especially steel) gets from repeated exposure to heat. So far, I've yet to see a good tutorial on how to paint that effect.  I tried a little experiment, and thought it might make a good new segment for H.O.W.  Experiments are good, even if they don't always work out how you planned.

I've been working on my Grey Knights for a painfully long time now without finishing a model, and I figured it was about damn time I put the finishing touches on a few of them.  One of the last things standing in my way, the flamers.  Now I'll admit, I haven't put a ton of effort in to searching for tutorials for this, but I've stumbled across a few over the last year and none impressed.  I had an idea for my own.

It's pretty basic.  Prime black.  Paint copper. Wash with a rainbow of GW inks. Now, I have looked at a lot of pictures online to see if I could figure out any pattern in the discoloration (ie., is the blue where the heat builds up most? the red? yellow tones?) but can't honestly pick up a pattern. So, until I learn otherwise, random it is.

Here's my flamer for my Terminators:

before and after washes

And my Dreadnought:

In the end, I'm not blown away by the results.  I really struggled to get any kind of transition from color to color, but that could certainly be chalked up to my lack of patience. These were both supposed to be more purple toward the body, and red/yellow toward the tip of the weapon.  They pretty much came out red all the way through.  I think it looks better than a lot of what I've seen out there, but I'm not happy with it yet. A good start.  The search continues.

Anyone have a good recipe they like for steel flambe?

~Deet