my awesome find

I stopped by the metal yard today to look through their stainless steel bins. They had a.bunch of bins full of stainless steel pieces from the local Bunn factory that never made it into one of their coffee pots. I was like a kid in a candy store. I bought 2 of these pieces in the pic and a third is flat. At .75 a lb it cost me 5 bucks. I intend to make a sliding draft control on my new drum. I want to be able to do pizzas so I need a good size intake to get extra high heat.

The factory made slot in the pic is approximately 1 1/4" x 5". This is the size I Intend to cut in my drum using the stainless as a pattern. What is that the equivalent of compared to a standard intake setup? I bought 2 pieces so I can put dual intakes on if needed as I am not sure if one will be enough intake. My Weber performer has 3 times that much draft opening.

So far it's not going so well. I got the hole cut out in my drum and the piece cut out of the stainless. I am having a tough time rigging up a way for the slide door to slide back and forth. When riveted down to the drum it is too tight to slide. No matter what i try it has a tough time sliding through the gap. It always tends to hang up somewhere. I will have to keep messing with it another day.