Now, I'm less of a noob at this stuff.
The heatsink assembly was cemented into the head. Fortunately, sparkie's half-ass twist tie job made it easy to remove the driver from the diode. Once I got the driver out, I went to town on getting the heatsink & diode assembly out. I first tried prying, but resorted to a hammer and screwdriver. I guess that diodes aren't sensitive to shock (not the electrical kind) because I beat the crap out of it to separate the heatsink from the cap. Finally, I got them separated and 1) replaced all of the wires, 2)properly soldered & shrink wrapped the connections to and from the driver, 3) ground all of the epoxy out of the head and polished down all of the nicks from my beating the hell out of the heatsink, 4) included enough wire to easily remove the head from the body without having to disconnect the power leads in case I want to replace the diode in the future. I polished up the lens, popped my batts in and now I have a laser that I kind of did build.
Also, sparkie's foam tape rigging to make the 18650 batts fit in the light really annoyed me, so I cut a segment of 3/4" PVC conduit and removed a few mm of diameter with some sandpaper, and now I have a battery compartment that holds my batts without having to ghetto-rig them with that foam tape.
I should charge sparkle for completing his design.