ok so here are some updates on what I've been planning:
so to try and mitigate the amount of shifting my armor pieces do when I'm trying to glue the shims, I'm now gluing tabs to the underside, to hold the ends together, then glue the shims on top, allowing me to get more precise shim positioning with less clamps.
with winter setting in, I'm now more pressed to actually do some work on this before the glue won't properly set in the cold.