Larry,
Congrats and I applaud your desire to bring this old war horse back to shooting condition. Hope you don't mind some opinions and thoughts, they won't cost anything and worth about the same. I love the period service style stag grips.
Your idea of milling the front sight base, welding up the two holes, go to a single factory style pin with rounded ends and installing a blade would be a great authentic touch. It will need to be wider to be compatible with the Micro-click post war sight. But if factory shaped, would fit very well with the vintage of the gun. You'll have a wonderfully accurate and practical shooting triple lock. Picture below for a pattern. The King sight it probably had is no loss to me, they are ugly and klunky looking in my opinion. Ok with a King rear sight or rib treatment but an eyesore by themselves.
I would also remove the grooves on the back of the sight and in the rear sight tang, finish it flush with the topstrap and blend the front tip of the rear sight tang into the taper like the beautiful pre war sight. And re-blue the sight.
With the 50% + original finish showing only honest wear and no real abuse, I would not refinish the gun. I can understand your desire to have a nice new shiny blue looking gun, but I would just carefully polish it with Flitz or Mothers mag wheel polish and retain its old world panache.
Is the cylinder hold open detent functioning? Those are usually crudy or even rusted but a very useful feature and a great old piece of Smith craftsmanship we'll never see again.
Hope that is useful and if not, that's OK too, it's your triple lock.
