jon,
Humble? Not sure I've ever been accused of that before. Hah!!
I just plain don't remember. But it does bring up an interesting, to me at least, perspective for discussion sake if nothing else.
I defer to you and your ANI on its acceptability in code compliance (in other words-works for me), and I would suspect that this is reflective of the committees wisdom here. Wisdom attributed with recognition of my past criticism of committees. Not the individuals to be sure, just the often messy consensus results.
Technically how can you be sure you have removed the root pass through backgouge? Can you visually recognize the unreheated zone of the hotpass as you're scarfin down through it (clearly an absurd point to make a point)?
Code wise the committee has essentially said, in my opinion, and in light of your confirmation, this concern is unduly picky. And actually I would agree now. If you backgouge to clean metal does it really matter?
As I've emphasized in other threads, where are the failures to justify this picky of a concern? Perhaps this post sounds like a lot of blah, blah, blah, but discussions like this do take place every day.