3DPrinting

I got an Ender V3 S2 a month ago to build a darksaber for my kid for Halloween. Came out looking great. No complaints. I then did a couple of upgrades (bed springs, converted to direct drive, Klipper/Mainsail rather than stock firmware/UI) and it's a lot easier to dial in bed tramming.

Now he wants a "drill sword", a project that's requiring much tighter tolerances. Things are sticking together, which is fine, I'm here for the process of adjusting settings and dialing in things like retraction and wiping and that sort of thing.

Problem is, all the calibration tests I'm doing - the retraction test built into Orca most notably, but also the pressure advance tests (tower and lines) - all seem about 90% dialed in no matter what I do. No retraction, tiny wispy lines I can wipe away with my finger. 8mm retraction at 60mm/s, same tiny wispy lines I can wipe away with my finger. Pressure advance test prints look nothing like the images on the Orca tutorial page, where there's a clear breakdown in quality at a certain point where you can measure and say, "A-ha, there's the right setting." They're all just mostly good but not perfect. But this drill sword, if it's not perfect, will seize up and not telescope correctly. I've mucked with about 15 different settings and the pre-print tests always come out stuck together when they should be free from one another.

Is this normal? Is there some safety setting that's keeping me from screwing things up?

Thanks for helping a noob out.