Man I felt this in my soul because I did almost the exact same thing with my coax crimper a few years back. The die in it had worn down so every fitting I crimped was just loose enough to cause callbacks, and I probably did 40 jobs before a buddy watched me terminate one and started laughing. I kept blaming the cheap splitters and the old cable runs when the whole time it was a worn out tool I refused to replace because it still "worked". Bought a new crimper for like 35 bucks and all my signal problems disappeared overnight. It's wild how we convince ourselves the expensive problems must have complicated causes when usually it's just one dumb little thing we stopped paying attention to. The worst part is how long we defend ourselves to the inspector or the customer instead of just looking at our own hands. Glad you got it sorted, those walk through passes must have felt amazing after three fails in a row.