WS plaster cloth on other brand foam

[pitshop]

I've got all the Woodland Scenics' risers in place, got the track laid (temporary), and next is the plaster cloth, but before that, I need to add flat foam sheets to support the roads and buildings. WS's video says that if I use any foam other than WS, that I'll need to "rough it up so the plaster cloth will stick". Does anybody have experience with this as being true or are they just saying that to get me to buy THEIR brand of foam? The 4X8 sheets at Home Depot are ALOT cheaper, but I don't want to be spending time sanding when I can be moving on to th enext step. Thoughts? Thanks in advance, Skip

[Don Z]

Skip,

I guess it's a good thing I didn't read the instructions; I used the WS plaster cloth and stuck it to my 2" pink foam with no problems.

Don Z.

[willy6]

My WS plaster cloth sticks quite well to my Home Depot pink foam. While I'm thinking about, where I live, Home Depot has the pink foam and Lowes doesn't...I wonder why.

[MisterBeasley]

I get my plaster cloth from the art supply places like Michaels and A.C. Moore, and my foam from Home Depot.  They all play nicely together.

Does Lowes have the blue stuff?  One's made by Owens-Corning, and the other by Dow, but they're the same, chemically and structurally.

But, consider this:  Why not rough up the foam?  The real world is not flat, not even over very short stretches.  I cut and gouge my foam, and use the scraps to build it up in other places.  These "microhills" and "microvalleys" are only a few scale feet high, but they make the terrain look much more realistic.  When I'm adding a larger lake or stream, I save a bit of the Envirotex and add it to ditches and small-scale depressions.  You might not notice these details at first, but on second glance they add a lot to the scenery.