How to repot a crested Trichocereus?

[winder]

I recently have seen many a crested Trichos, at least I think they are Trichocereus species, for sale at the large home improvement stores.  Some have the emerald green skin and dark spines of San Pedros, and others have a coloration including golden spines that remind me of a T. spachianus.

I have become taken by them and have bought several, 4 of which I still have.  The largest is the most recently acquired of these oddities is befuddling me in my effort to repot it.  Typically the cacti I buy are in cheap plastic pots, so they always have to be repotted.  I prefer clay pots  with some mix of coarse sand and leaf mold, but the mix isn't the issue with this one.  The issue is the geometry of this crest's roots and the excessive coverage of the crest.  Consider the crest as a fan.  usually the fan is only half of circular shape from the root ball at the center.  This one is more like 2/3's of a circular shape, so the crest covers from 4 o'clock to 8 o'clock running in a counter clockwise direction.  Thus when i go to repot this one, if I  put the root ball into the soil, the flesh of the crest will touch the soil.  Further complicating the situation is the fact that the root ball is not centered in the same plane as the crested-fan shape but is angled back away from one side.  That is looking down from above the top of the crest with teh crest across east-west, the root ball is visible to the North (or south) protruding out on one side of the crest.

My concern is that if the flesh is touching the soil that it will eventually rot.

How should I repot this?  Whole?

Or should I cut the crest into two or more pieces, let them callous, and then root the pieces?

Or should this become a graft?

[Stonehenge]

Can't say I've heard this problem before. Off the top of my head, how about a small mouthed clay pot? In other words, a pot not designed for plants. You'd have to drill holes in the bottom for drainage but if you find one with the right size opening, it would at least keep the crest from touching soil. You could also cut the opening a bit to fit the plant. Masonry bits are good for drilling and a hacksaw or even a file will do for modifying the opening. If the rootball is too excentric for any pot, you could trim it a little without harming the plant. I would do that rather than chopping it up