Thanks for the advice and sorry for being so late getting back -- been a crazy couple of weeks.  I did have a local 'smith silver solder the front sight base onto the barrel but the project may be delayed until I come up with some distilled water to rust blue the barrel.

I agree that proper tools are a necessity, but the action wrench using 1.5" U-bolts looks doable with what I have available and I have a 30-40 chamber reamer and headspace gages around here someplace to touch up the headspace of the Criterion barrel.