Jill,
I think the Bucklite Max folder make great EDC knives, good hunting knives and good backpacking knives, the latter because they're so dang light. I'm planning on getting the large one now that they've changed the blade shape a bit.
IME, all lockbacks tend towards vertical play as they age and all knives have things they're good at and things they're not so good at. I just adjust my expectations and focus on what the knife is good at and avoid things that it's not.
Hard cutting of wood where you exert a lot of opening force on the blade is hard on lockbacks. I have a larger than average property for my area with a lot of junk Maple and other assorted trees and brush. When working around my property, it's not uncommon to need to cut back branches or saplings. If the branch is thumb sized or less, I just use my pocket knife to cut it back as opposed to walking to the barn to get clippers or a hatchet.
We also make fire a lot either in the backyard pit or when camping. In the east, that means making shavings or feathersticks - so again, hard carving cuts.
Pretty much any lock back I've owned will "rock" a bit under this sort of cutting, pushing the lockbar up. Eventually, on some, this can lead to wear of the pivot and lockbar pivot. On the Bucklite Max folders, they got progressively worse both in a year's time. Big slip joints like a Sodbuster and other designs like lock ring type locks seem to stand up to this kind of cutting better for me.
In the end, I still really like large Bucklite Max and may get another for backpacking, where the primary use is food prep and I really need a lightweight folder.
FWIW, I think the "spine wack" test is a poor test of a lockback's strength or safety. The physics of the test are designed to defeat the lockbar design and don't really match any real life scenario that I can think of. I do think that once a lockback has developed a noticeable amount of lock bar rock (lifts up under hard cutting) they become unsafe as they can close in a "sling shot" type failure when you cut through a branch, which momentarily snaps the blade forward while the lock bar is rasied.
If it were me, I would enjoy the 486 for what it is. It's a great lightweight EDC type knife. If I need to cut wood on a regular basis, I would and do reach for something else.
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