Block Archery Targets: How Open-Layer Foam Works

Fletchwise guides are independent and hype-free – we are not sponsored by any target brand and we do not sell targets.

This is worth clearing up before anything else, because it causes real buying mistakes. BLOCK is a registered target line made by Field Logic. It is not the generic word for a cube-shaped foam target – but because Block targets sold so well, plenty of listings now describe any square block of foam as a “block target”.

That matters because the thing that makes a genuine Block work is a specific patented construction, not its shape. A cheap cube of solid foam with a printed face is a completely different product that happens to look similar in a photo. If easy arrow removal is why you are shopping, the shape is not what delivers it. Our foam archery targets guide covers the wider category, including the solid and self-healing designs that are not Blocks.

A bag target stops an arrow with bulk resistance – layers of loose synthetic fill absorb energy across a large area. A solid foam target stops it by sheer density: the point has to displace material to get in, and that same material squeezes the shaft on the way out.

The open-layer approach is different. Sheets of friction foam are stacked without adhesive between them, so an incoming arrow parts the layers instead of boring through them. The stopping force is the friction of many foam faces gripping the length of the shaft, plus heat: a shaft moving at 300 fps generates real heat as it decelerates, and that heat makes the foam grab harder for a moment. When it cools – a matter of seconds – the grip relaxes and the arrow slides out with very little effort.

That is the whole trick, and it explains every characteristic of these targets. Layers part rather than compress, so removal is easy. Friction acts along the shaft rather than at the tip, so stopping power holds up at short range with fast bows. If you want the engineering rather than the marketing, the underlying layered archery target patent filings describe the construction directly.

The sentence “friction heats the foam and that makes it grab” gets repeated on every Block product page without explaining what it actually means in practice. Here is the mechanism and why it matters for how you use the target.

When a shaft travelling at hunting speed slides between two unglued foam layers, it generates heat at the contact surfaces — enough to briefly soften the foam at the microscopic points where the shaft touches it. In the half-second of penetration, the heat makes the foam grip the shaft harder than it would at room temperature, which is what lets a relatively lightweight 18-20 inch target stop an arrow from a 70 lb bow without being dense enough to be hard to pull. Seconds later the heat dissipates, the grip relaxes, and the shaft slides out with little effort.

In cold weather, that cycle changes. Cold foam is stiffer and the heat generated by a fast shot takes longer to build at the contact surfaces, so stopping power holds up — but the shaft takes longer to cool down afterward, and for a few extra seconds the arrow will take noticeably more effort to pull. This is not a defect; it is the mechanism working the way it works, and it is worth knowing so you do not blame the target.

If you only ever shoot field points and shoot a lot of them, a bag target is still the cheapest way to put arrows downrange. The open-layer design earns its money when you need one target to take both.

Here is the part the product pages leave out, and it follows directly from how the target works. The stopping mechanism is unglued layers gripping the shaft. A broadhead does not part those layers – it cuts them. Every broadhead shot slices the friction faces it passes between, and those cuts do not heal.

The practical consequence surprises people: a foam target that has been shot with broadheads can lose the ability to stop field points that it stopped easily when new. Archers report punching clean through the center of a target at 40 yards after a season of broadhead practice, on a target that would still have been stopping field points if broadheads had never touched it. The center goes soft first, because that is where everyone aims.

Two things follow. First, the useful way to think about a foam target’s life is not how many arrows it has taken, but how many broadheads – and where. Second, if broadheads are the point of the target, the original open-layer construction handles them better than a foam-face design, whose printed face tears on removal. Either way, rotate the target: most Block models are shot on two or four sides for exactly this reason, and moving your aiming point a few inches between sessions is free.

The layers themselves are not glued to each other, but they are not loose either – a Block target is held together by an outer band wrapped around the stack. That band, not the foam, is the actual weak point. Once it is cut or worn through, usually from repeated shots near the edge, the compressed stack it was holding starts to loosen, and a target that still has plenty of usable foam left starts falling apart layer by layer.

The fix costs a few dollars and takes five minutes: wrap a ratchet strap around the target and re-tighten the stack. Archers who do this routinely get a season or more of extra life out of a target that looked finished, and some go further, pulling the least-shot layers out of two worn targets and rebuilding one solid one, strapped tight. It will not be mentioned on the box, but it is the difference between buying a full-price replacement and spending a few dollars on a strap.

Not the standard version, and the reason follows directly from the mechanism above. The open-layer friction design is tuned around the energy a compound arrow carries – a crossbow bolt hits with meaningfully more kinetic energy at a similar distance (a typical 400-grain bolt at 370 fps carries roughly 121 ft-lbs, against roughly 75 ft-lbs for a 350-grain compound arrow at 310 fps – see our crossbow vs compound comparison for where those numbers come from), and standard open-layer foam is not dense enough to absorb that before the bolt reaches the far side.

Manufacturers address this with a different, hybrid construction rather than just a bigger version of the same target: a dense outer wall to slow the bolt first, wrapped around a layered core that finishes the stop with the same friction-and-heat mechanism described above. If you shoot a crossbow, buy a target explicitly rated in fps for crossbow use – often 500 fps or higher – rather than assuming a standard open-layer target will scale up. The number on the box is the only thing that tells you which construction you are actually getting.

Backyard Block models generally run from around 18 inches for the classic size up to larger XL versions, with youth-oriented models sized down and rated for lower poundage. The size decision is mostly about your own accuracy at your practice distance: a target only needs to be big enough that a bad shot still lands in foam rather than in the fence behind it. Beginners should buy bigger than feels necessary.

Height matters as much as size, and it is the most common backyard mistake. A target sitting on the ground puts your point of aim well below shoulder height, which changes your form and buries low arrows in dirt. Get the center up to roughly chest height – about 51 inches is the standard for a reason. Our archery target stands guide covers doing that without the stand collapsing, and the DIY target page is there if you would rather build a backstop than buy one.

Buy one if you want a single target that takes both field points and broadheads, and if pulling arrows out of your current target is the thing that annoys you most. Skip it if you shoot field points exclusively and in volume – a bag is cheaper for that job. Skip it too if you are shooting a heavy hunting setup at close range in a small yard, where a deeper target or a proper backstop matters more than the layer design.

And if you are shopping broadhead practice specifically, read the broadhead targets page first – the question there is not which brand, it is what a broadhead does to whatever you shoot it into. For the full category comparison including 3D animal targets, start at our how to pick a target guide.