Compliments of the season to you and your family too, Pete. Trying the mixture adjustment needle from the other carburetor is worth a try - damaged mixture needles can be very difficult to adjust. If any metal has been removed from the tapered part, the "2 turns" rule won't apply. You might also check that no dirt or metal filings has found its way in between the mixture needle and the jet it partly obstructs. Sometimes when there is dirt involved, the mixture adjustment doesn't seem to work, until you adjust it way rich, then the engine suddenly becomes over-rich and you have to adjust the mixture back to where it was in the first place. If that happens, it means that whatever crud was obstructing it has been sucked past the restriction and has probably gone forever, into the engine. Unfortunately there may be more where that came from, so the whole cycle can repeat. It's very annoying.
If you still find small engines interesting now that you are getting the hang of them Pete, you may find yourself with a new hobby. It seems to happen to a lot of us.
Hunting happens with both two and four stroke engines if they have governors, and it always means either lean mixture, or the governor mechanism is a bit sticky. Bent links that bind at the ends where they pivot, can cause the same problem.
