dipstick accuracy

That's what I said! I have a seven quart pan so I fill up the filter, put it on and add the rest to the engine. I have a little mark I put on the aftermarket dipstick that shows where the oil sets after I add the oil after I fill the filter and then add the six quarts to the engine. I like to keep it about that level but a little higher or a little lower doesn't mean diddly. (I mean a tiny bit one way or the other.) It's more of a reference point than an exact measurement. Never had any troubles in twenty years doing it that way.
Dave.

 

When I swapped engines, I put a nice chrome short dipstick tube on it. It had to be bent on two planes to clear the headers and wiper motor. The dipstick is a flat piece of metal that would not go around both curves, because a flat piece of metal will only be compliant in one direction. To solve this, I twisted an original dipstick into a spiral, which allows it to bend in any direction. Since the dipstick was about 3 inches too long, I had to cut some off. This left me with no mark for checking the oil level. I made sure the end that would go into the oil had the flat side parallel to the top of the oil in the sump. To get a correct mark, I installed a new filter (empty), filled the empty engine with the requsite 5 quarts of oil, removed the coil wire, and cranked it for about 10 seconds to fill the filter. I then took a reading on the bare dipstick, and marked it with a file. I now have a very accurate dipstick for the 5 quart fill.

 

That's why I liked my Model T Ford. Two brass petcocks, one slightly above the other. Open the top one. If oil comes out all over your clean shirt and runs down your arm, the engine is full. If none comes out, open the lower petcock. If oil runs out on your still fairly clean shirt you still have enough oil.
Maybe someday you add enough until it comes out of the top petcock again. But if after all of these petcock openings nothing comes out, add some oil and start checking again. Eventually you will end up needing to wipe your arm off and change your shirt.
If you had lots of money you spent a few dollars to buy a site gauge to replace the top petcock.

And there were those modern cars with an oil filter on the top or side of the engine. You unscrewed the lid, gently removed the filter element from inside, carried it across the clean fender, the cement driveway, shop floor, and disposed of it in a garbage can. You then grabbed a new replacement filter element and followed your steps back to the car using the stream of oil on the floor and fender as your guide. But first you used rags to clean the old oil and crude from inside the oil filter housing.
Don't forget to replace the oil drain plug and refill the engine with the required amount of oil, checking the dipstick.

Or you could do like my mom, just trade cars in five or six years before the oil got dirty.

 

That's brilliant!!

 

We're not all dipsticks !

 

One of my cars has a convoluted dip stick tube that makes reading the stick difficult after the first "pull". It is simple enough to read when the engine has sat for a bit and the oil has run out of the tube but when filling(I use bulk)after a change it becomes very tedious as the oil gets dragged up the tube by the stick and also smears it a bit. Letting it sit a while is the only way to get a good read. Clean clear oil makes this even harder.
Maybe the issue you are having??