very tight

No. It would just sit up a little bit. You're not trying to put the cannonball through the hole. This is how I interpreted the original telling of the brass monkey story. You've got a brass plate with holes big enough for the cannonballs to sit in to keep them from rolling around the deck. Somehow the coefficient of expansion was supposed to make the holes too small (or is it too large?) to adequately prevent the balls from rolling out.