Testing composite photos of knives in scale

I've been thinking a while about taking pictures of all the knives in my collection, but I would like to have a single picture of each knife, kind of a picture database. Also I thought it would be neat if the pictures showed the knives in the same scale so they could be compared with eachother. I did a simple experiment today, taking pictures of a couple of knives on the board along with a ruler beside them. I then used the ruler to scale the pictures in photo software on the computer. The result looks promising, but it would be nice to have better photo lights (well, any lights actually) and a camera stand. Now it takes some work to get acceptable focus and also keep approximately the same photo angle.

Anyways, here's a test picture of a Konosuke and a Shiro Kamo knife. Two different pictures merged into one.

 

… just send them all to me and I'll take some photos for you!
On the serious note this is something that I wanted to do with my collection for quite some time. But I'm probably too lazy for the task.

 

Yes, I'm quite lazy myself but I thought if I find an easy method to do this I could take it easy and take some photos now and then, slowly working through the collection and building the "database" of pictures.

Some things I think will improve the concept:

• I want the kanji in the pictures but since different makers have kanji on different sides, I will have to take pictures of both sides if I want to compare knife profiles. Kind of irritating, but whatever...
• If I want to have good profile shots, I will have to put the knife up on something so that the blade lies flat. Without that, the blade will tilt a bit, especially with d-handles.
• I should put the knife on a cutting mat with a measuring grid, so that the scale is visible in the picture.