Definitely worth a look. Block is at work anyways, gives me the weekend mull over my options.
I had considered that before I started, but you're comments about how much trouble you had peening it steered me away from it to begin with, and then I found a 2 foot piece of 1/2 copper at work and that sealed the deal. I'm going to check and see what grainger has in stock locally, what wall thickness is that?