Note: don't just replace a section of the old steering shaft with a collapsible section, as it might still spear you just fine - often, a straight, non-collapsible steering shaft has a sad excuse for a support bearing and will rip out and at least hit you in the face pretty hard. Installing an entire steering shaft, u-joints, steering wheel hub and associated brackets from a modern-ish car with roughly the same box/rack-to-wheel distance is actually fairly easy. In addition to being safer, it solves a lot of bearing/alignment/parts availability issues out of the box. You weld the bottom u-joint to the old shaft's stub, weld the steering support bracket off of the donor car to whatever body parts are close and also to the dash bar (important!), and then bolt the whole affair back in. Checking newer models of the same make might help, too, as sometimes you can skip the custom shaft stub-u-joint part. Make sure to have the bracket securely mounted in all three dimensions.
I would recommend against aftermarket steering columns as in my experience factory steering components are a better choice for something that will sit in a field for a half a year at a time, exposed to the elements and all. Plus, you know for sure that somebody smacked the same one into a wall and it didn't spear a dummy.
K Car Stalker