Have you drilled your elevator horns to center bearing holes yet? If not, go back and check to make sure your elevator rod ends are adjusted to final spec before trimming anything.
If you've already drilled the horns for the center bearing, any adjustment to those elevator rod end bearings are going to cause a misalignment. And, it makes a surprisingly large difference in the tip weight to HS clearance.
I did learn that chromoly can in fact be plug-welded though. ;-)
After fixing my elevator horns and setting the specified length on those elevator rod end bearing, I only had to adjust the clearance between the tip weights and HS by a very slight amount.