Lots of comments on the OP's technique so far, but no one answered the
question.... LOL.

The answer is (suprisingly) not that much velocity. Depending on what type
of strip it was (bendable and heavy is better, hickory better than balsa
), and what type of wall it was (stiff is better), the collision of strip
to wall was very close to perfectly elastic. In english, this means the
strip bounded back with only slightly less velocity than what it came in at.
And it would not take much velocity to send a strip as described back across
a 15ft shop (way under 50 feet per second or 30 miles per hour) -- durn near
anyone could throw something like this WAY more that 15'.

So if it came off the saw at 60 miles per hour, this could easily happen.
You don't need gunshot velocity or anything even close. Just suicidal
tendancies...

Try this sometime -- get a 1/4" dowel 3' long and bounce it on a concrete
floor. It bounces quite nicely, and can be pretty fun to try to get a
straight bounce.

Matthew (who is always fascinated by crap like this)

"Toller" wrote in message
...
I was cutting some 1/8x1/8 strips. I knew they would kick back pretty
good
so I got anything breakable out of the way.

One hit the wall 8' back and then bounced 15' nearly hitting the opposite
wall. I wonder what kind of velocity is necessary for a trick like that.
The other 5 were less dramatic.

Yeh, I know I could have avoided it by cutting them off, rather than
cutting
them; but the saw was setup perfectly from cutting them to width.