Well, I tried using TES5Edit to merge mods, but ended up making a right **** up out of it. To be honest I was lucky to get my save files working again after that little experiment. But now I'm up and running again I've been thinking about the CK. I figured a lot of the modders end up merging their own armor and weapon mods after a while using the CK, so it certainly must be possible for everyone else. On looking at the http://www.creationkit.com/Mod_Merging It looks far easier than TES5Edit, with none of that dodgy renumbering of IDs. The only question is, it doesn't seem to give instructions on how to merge the mods into a totally new esm (or how to create that new esm), only on how to merge them into a pre-existing mod. I'd really like to create a totally new esm file to merge them all into. Anyone able to help here?

*Just to remind everyone what I'm trying to do here at the moment. I'm trying to merge all weapons mods into a single new weapons esm, and merge all armor mods into one new armor esm.

I don't think there is any good way to "merge" using the CK.

You can, of course, simply recreate the items in an entirely new ESP or ESM, if you so desire.