My experience has been that older tools are made of quality steel and if you can sharpen them properly they are far better than much of the stuff on sale today.

Even if you find a decent modern drawknife it will only be roughed out on a grinder and you will still need to sharpen it before you can do anything useful with it.

To be effective hand tools have to be kept really sharp. If you can't manage that then avoid them and live in a mess of dust and chips and stick to power planers and grinders. They will do the job, blunt hand tools won't.

The only exception I can think of is a Stanley replaceable blade plane I have where the cutting tip is clamped on and can be changed when blunt. These come beautifully sharp and in several grades to deal with modern composite woods such as chipboard.

I still find myself sharpening these about a dozen times before they have to be changed when the holder cant deal with them any more but you could change them each time, they are not expensive. I have never seen a drawknife made like that.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=96829

Never bought it so I don't know about the quality.

I did buy one from Baileys. It's now $52. But when sharpened, works
very nicely.

http://www.baileysonline.com/itemdetail.asp?item=15707&catID=

The local farm and ranch store wants $80 for the same knife.