Crankshaft Alignment to Block

[tbirdtbird]

"but do you think it is realistic to expect to move those surfaces enough to make all points within 0.005"

Sure it is done all the time.
Keep trying....way less work than the machining you are speaking of

what variety of shim thicknesses do you have available? You usually have to make your own from various shim stock. Having just the .010 ones on hand from the vendors usually is not enough. Perhaps this is where your trouble lies.
Herm says he has had to go as thin as .001 but we have never had to use less than .005.
I buy shim stock from McMaster Carr; there are other vendors; I am sure eBay/Amazon has various thicknesses as well.
Sometimes you can take main bearing shims and cut them up for what you need.
Use a pry bar carefully under each ear to make clearance to get the shims in and out.
Be sure to torque the top 2 bolts to the specified torque, and not just 'make them tight'
They should be the same torque as the other 4 which I believe off the top of my head is 50-55. Once I determine what shims I need, I use a very thin layer of black RTV as 'glue' to hold them in place (after a final torquing of course), since those 2 bolts are gonna have to come out before you install the engine since most of us install the accel. bracket after the motor is in. And without the accel bracket in place, the stock bolts will be too long so we keep a pair of shorter ones on hand for all this setup we are talking about.

There is a poster on here who had a total engine rebuild several months back and after re-installing the engine and his rebuilt tranny found that the tranny was jumping out of gear. This shim setting up procedure had somehow been overlooked, and evidently they shoved a .010 shim under each ear after everything was all back in the car. Only problem is, this can hardly be called 'dialing in'. No doubt the engine will have to come back out of the car for proper setup