I posted this on Tony's build thread. Reposting here...
Regarding the Kidney notch/shim situation, from a film production standpoint, if you were in charge of wardrobe on set and had to accommodate troopers with different sized waists I think one of two things would happen:
1. Extend each side and leave the notch as-is.
2. Split the back, widen it and reshape the sides.
I highly doubt that production would take the time to deal with covering up the current notch, shimming, and making a new notch. It's just too time and labor intensive for something that is never really seen on screen. As we all have learned - these suits were pretty much thrown together and never intended to be heavily scrutinized. There was no home video when Star Wars came out so they were more free to do what they had to do to get stuff on screen. That said, maybe the spirit of production warrants some consideration on this issue?
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