Blade play is good in a lockback?

[Joe Dirt]

.....It's interesting because all of my knives, even axis locks, get some vertical play after reasonable use.

Axis locks should never have vertical play in them. The tang of the blade where the axis bar locks up is ramped. It's made this way so that as time goes on and it wears the Axis lock bar moves up the ramp. Axis lock Benchmade's should never have any vertical blade play. Never!

If you have a Benchmade look at it. Pull the Axis lock bar back and look at the blade tang that you can see. It's ramped upward going towards the blade. It's really a great design.