I used an air chisel with a ground-down pointy bit......works amazing....had to be careful not to shoot the pinion out of the pumpkin sometimes. I laid a rag in the housing to catch the pinion.
And I'd say you are right where you need to be...the patterns look "textbook" good.
...and the over shimmed pinion patterns look textbook for a pinion that's too deep...
I made an undersized setup race for the inner pinion bearing, and my old outer pinion bearing wasn't too tight on the shaft so I used this one till the final assembly.
Assuming that you are torquing the pinion nut to spec before reading patterns and setting backlash......?
How many times have you had the pinion out roughly?