It looks like Chipmunk has the concept of collision slop (see cpSpaceGet/SetCollisionSlop() in http://chipmunk-physics.net/release/ChipmunkLatest-Docs/) for turning this down… it seems to amount to 10% which in my case is quite high.
Would it be possible to expose this attribute to the Ruby gem?
Having access to cpSpaceGet/SetCollisionBias() could also be useful.