Well, you can't say that's not a keyboard!
Updated: I have some more work to do. I thought maybe the center post was hitting the PCB in a way that might hurt it and also causing some teetering. Need to figure out exactly where the PCB is hitting the post, might have to mod/sand down the center post or something.
The new hot swap board from 1upkeyboards is awesome. Put the thing together in maybe an hour, everything worked perfectly (on the board). Used a DZ60 brass plate I had leftover from another failed project. (The DZ60 brass plate had production issues where you couldn't split the shifts/backspaces without modding the switches or filing the plate, but it works fine for a standard ansi layout)
Unfortunately, it did not play super well with the 5 degree case. When I first put the plate/pcb in the case it appeared to be fine, but then the keycaps were too close to the left edge. I tried shifting it to the right and was able to, but it felt like I was maneuvering the center standoff around PCB elements (hot swap sockets, diodes, can't say exactly which thing it was getting stuck on). Then when I had it all centered i could feel it teeter when i pressed down on the bottom left of the keyboard and at that point it became clear to me that this probably wasn't a good idea. So when I first put it in the plate felt stable like the center standoff was hitting a benign area of the PCB, but when i centered it, it became unstable.