Thanks for the reply
I’m aware that it was the nasty edges that were causing the problems. I ended up cleaning up all the verts until the edge was workable.
I started to use ngons because I couldn’t build one part of the mesh without messing up another part or adding an absurd about of unnecessary geometry.
I’m still not satisfied. I’m going to keep experimenting with ngons until I find a work flow that doesn’t require much “clean up”.