After my normal painting experiment, I realised that my UV was causing issues. I tried to correct this, by using a 12 plane projection map rather than 6.
This improved things slightly, and I was able to create a candlestick with much better normal detail, as it flowed better. I do, however, think that this could still be improved.
I did find that my textures seem quite low res, even though my maps are 4K. This is something I need to explore to find a way to stop this.