Again, to all who may have followed my advice, please refrain in the future...
I wouldn't beat yourself up too much, mistakes are gonna happen. It's always up to the individual to check when following someone else's advice, especially on nuts/bolts and parts that are untested lol. Trying to find better and/or cheaper solutions for problems and taking the time to share your experience, even if it turns out to be wrong, it's still a valuable learning experience and a worthwhile endeavor.
Also, this is a pretty good one, probably gonna re-use this one down the road:
"Simple actually, if you put them in the wash and then into the dryer on high temperature for about 45 minutes, the shrink ration is exactly 49.74%, (the rest is negligible you may have to fill the rest in with RTV)."