OK I tried this out last night. I was able to use the acetone to loosen up the threads. If you look at the mod it says to turn the front of the laser pointer tube 'as if to tighten' meaning, use the front part to loosen up the laser diode and driver board. I was unable to get that to happen. I'm suprised because this pointer is quite old, from 1999 or thereabouts. I would think that if modifications were a problem, they'd start gluing them together later (closer to 2002 when the prices dropped).
The acetone did loosen the threads to where I was able to get the front half of the pointer body OFF (by unscrewing CCW) but turning CW did not budge the diode/driver ONE BIT. With the front off, I injected more acetone around the driver, and I even put some in through the open button hole (removed the silicone rubber button cap) to get it from both sides. It looks like the diode of the pointer shown on the web page was not glued into the tube, or was glued very lightly. Mine would not budge. I put the front tube back on loosely and tried to use it like a handle to pull the diode/driver out but it did not move. I put over 100 lbs of pressure on it to get it to move. I was at the point where I thought the body of the pointer would buckle so I quit.
I left the acetone in the joint around the tube and the diode/driver board so maybe today it will have loosened up the adhesive enough. I will try again. If it never comes loose, you can use the exploded view on that page to guess where the pot is and just cut a hole in the tube at that point. That's plan B. I just hope the acetone or it's fumes don't cause any damage to the optics. I shook out the excess liquid but hopefully there's enough around the diode heatsink to work.
PS Does anyone know what that white putty like material is they use to keep the IR filter on?
