Hell's fire - I've welded up axles and re-drilled them myself in shop at the house using nothing more fancy than a simple drill press. Sounds to me like they just don't want to mess with it.

One another note - you can just locate an 8.5" 10-bolt axle out of a 3rd gen Nova or 2nd gen F-body and slap it in there. You can pick those up for little of nothing if you look hard enough. It'll have the correct 5-lug pattern and the correct width. You just have to shave the spring perches off and weld new ones on in the right spot. I guess the other part to note though is that you will then have an open driveline. Not sure if your '54 has a torque tube or an open driveline. I think they changed that somewhere around the '54-'55 year model.

1950 4100 - unrestored and driven weekly for almost no reason at all.