can 'battering' be a containing indicator?

I wrote a clue that I liked: Build iron battering ram (5) The answer would be FRAME if you'd allow 'battering' to mean 'coating', like when you batter fish you are coating it. So, you have FE (iron) around RAM, giving FRAME which is a synonym of build. The FE is being used like batter to surround the other letters. The question is though, would this be valid? I'm not sure I can back it up from the definitions of 'batter' or 'coating' that I read on Collins dictionary, but it makes sense in my mind. What do you all think please?