Thanks for your input, that is a very interesting section(4.8 AWS A2.4-98). I learned something today. I never thought about the fact that it should be noted on our erection plans as per this section. I will issue a revision to the drawings to include these notes about the backing.
Monday, Oct. 14, 2002, I drove 735 miles to the jobsite and met with the inspector, the general contractor, the erector, and the engineers that had hired the inspector. All these issues were resolved, after we talked about what the erector and I were trying to accomplish with the ceramic backing. Some of joints are hard to get to and makes it a tough job welding when you are in the air at these heights. And everyone agreed that if the erector wasn't very careful and burned through, he would have a very big mess to fix, therfore the ceramic backing made sense to all involved.