Well, I had an uninterrupted sleep last night and I think I came up with a solution. I'm inexperienced so if I'm wrong I hope y'all will let me know. What I think is the solution is to get the BCD value and check for a > 8 value. If less then 8 then do my left shift as I need it, then store the value in 1 byte (ie if a 7 then it's less then 8 so I can shift left and know it won't "fall out the end". If it's more then 8 (ie 12) then subtract 8 (leaving 4) and then shift my 4 and store the result in a 1 byte value that can be my "high" byte. I hope this makes sense. I'm going to try it out as soon as I can. I am grateful to all who responded. As I get further into my project it's nice to know that this resource is available.

Thanks !