No, it's just a depriming die, and tough enough to survive a little mishandling, i.e., a Berdan primed case that had slipped in there.
I've had several RCBS pins give up on milsurp .30-06 brass, got the Lee die before I started loading 5.56 in large volume so just use it on both. I haven't had an issue with decap pins since. I've used it on thousands of IMI, CBC, and LC cases in 5.56, and they seem to deprime with a lot less effort than '06s, so I might could get away with using the Redding .223 dies I have
A secondary reason for the die was some of the '06 cases I used to get had corrosive primers, and the salts persisted enough I would wet tumble them to avoid corrosion in some out-of-the -way spots in my Garands. I haven't run into any of those cases in the last few years, most recent batches were LC late enough to be non corrosive.
After the initial deprime/decrimp operations, I go back to a normal f/l die.
I've not had any issues (thus far) decapping my 5.56 brass with my Redding .223 die - I can feel that it's taking more force to perform the task than your average .223 case, but the decapping pin seems plenty robust enough. I don't feel any "flex" in it or any other indication that it might break/give out. I've never done any crimped military brass for other cartridges, so I can't speak from experience as to whether the crimp on the larger casings is tougher to break through - though I do think i have a bag of 7.62 NATO stashed away somewhere......
Kaiser Norton
