I modelled one side of a face (right side). Alt-D. Played with it some more. Joined the two objects. Welded the “seam” created by somewhat overlapping vertices. Sub-surf’d the resulting mesh.
Result:
Is this simply bad welding on my part? Do I have to rearrange the resulting seam? Any help is greatly appreciated.
I don’t think recalculating normals outside is your problem.
I think you need to move your “limit” (in edit mode under mesh tools panel) a bit higher, maybe from .001 to .02, select all vertices, and then remove doubles (W-Key).