Thanks Ghoste, Raymond and Canoncan.
Raymond, it isn't hard to do at all. The key is using a tripod for something this close and make sure it is level. If it isn't level, your camera will dip and rise at it goes through it's arc from left to right, which will cause distortion and you will lose image area that has to be cropped off in the final print. The other thing is to keep the same focus and exposure across all of the images. If you are using flash, you will be in manual exposure anyway. If you are using existing light you will want to use exposure lock or put it in manual after you take a meter reading (or with digital determine the proper exposure with test shots and the histogram.
What I do is set up the object to shoot and get it positioned and lighted the way I want. I then set up my tripod and make sure it is level. I have bubble levels on my both the column and the ball head so I make sure the legs are level first and then level the ball head with the camera on it. If you don't have a tripod with bubble levels on it, you can get a regular carpenter level and sit it across the top before you put your camera on, or across the top of your camera after you have it there.
After I have the camera positioned and level across the width of left to right I take some pictures of the left, middle and right sides and check the histogram to make sure there is very little exposure changes from left to right. Sometimes the flash from my monolights will be different than I expected. I then focus on the center area and push the button half way down to lock focus (I'm in manual exposure so don't need to worry about that) swing the camera to the left for the first shot, take a shot (and still holding the button half way down so as not to lose focus) swing to the right so that I have at least 25% overlap from the first shot in the view finder, wait a couple of seconds after my lights whistle to let me know they are charged again, take the next picture, swing to the right, overlap of about 25%, take a picture and continue doing this until I've got all of my shots. If I find I have trouble keeping the button half way down I will put it in manual focus and take the shots.
Also, I shot panoramas usually in vertical orientation. I have to take a few more images sometimes, but I get more image area vertically this way.
I will do several series of shots, all going from left to right each time. If I want to bracket the exposure I will change the exposure between series.
It really isn't as complicated or take as long as I explained here. After you have done it a couple of times, you will get a good idea of what you need to do and it will be easier. For Canon cameras, there is a program called Photo Stitch that comes on the CD. This works pretty good for stitching images together. I found I like Panorama Factory even better than Photo Stitch. I believe Photoshop CS comes with a decent stitcher built in. And there is a freebie called Photo Tools that a lot of people use but it isn't real user friendly. You can find out more about it and more information on panoramas at this site:
http://www.tawbaware.com/forum2/index.php
Mike
admire your equipment ~~~I only have olympus X250 ~~~total atomatic DC ~~ 
. Sounds like an elaborate setup 
Really though, I've seen people take a lot better pictures with a lot less equipment. People that have talent can get away with it... for the rest of us there's Mastercard. 
