The Kidney and Cod Thong - hook and eye
I already wrote about this in my ESB build thread, but some more info has come to light in a pic to solidify my choice of hardware.
This is a previously unseen look at the thong attachment hardware on one of the tour suits (posted here with permission).
That's the hook of a hook & eye set at the end of the thong. This is a blow-up so the quality is poor.
Before I saw this pic I had already decided on an English brand called Newey's for these hook & eyes:
I feel like these are as good as any other vintage brand I've seen, especially in light of the new pic. And I seriously doubt we can ever get confirmation of the original brand of hardware used, so this will work for me.
Now... there is a difference here though between this tour suit and the PP1:
the pp1 thong is opposite. It has the 'eye' attached to it, whereas the touring suit above has the 'hook' attached. Obviously assembly of these systems were not meticulously uniform across the suits.
I have no way of knowing which configuration PP2 is, and I'm not sure it matters a lot, but I decided to do my PP2 the same as the touring suit, with the hook on the thong, and the eye on the kidney. I'll do it PP1 style on the ESB.
then the eye goes on the kidney like so, although it's hard to see in this pp1 photo: