Practical Solution For Giant Spike Balls

The dungeon has giant swinging spike balls that cause no end of frustration to explorers such as myself. They dare to keep bold, intrepid, totally-not-thieving adventurers out of the depths with their inability to be destroyed!...Or do they?

I have tried removing the block that they rest on to no avail, but is there any practical way to remove the giant spike ball that plagues the dungeon? Or, failing that, is there an elegant solution to dealing with these grossly annoying obstacles?

According to http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Spike_Ball:

They spawn and despawn off-screen like any other enemy — if you leave a room and return later, it will have a different configuration of Spike Balls.

So unfortunately, any steps you take to control an individual spike ball will be rendered moot when you leave and come back because the spike ball will almost certainly have moved.

EDIT: Here's a way to potentially use this for your benefit: If there's a Spike Ball in an especially difficult position (say, so that it makes it impossible to get to a chest), you can leave the area and come back later. Unfortunately, since navigating the dungeon is nasty enough, this will only help with the worst Spike Balls.

According to here: Spike Ball

"It is possible to hurt and kill the Spike Ball with the Thorns buff using the Thorns Potion."

By experience, it seems that spike ball despawn quickly enough when going off screen. Mining the center block might help with that.

But you'd have to evade them once, or maybe go back.