Otto K. Wohlers

Otto K. Wohlers is known today chiefly through A Course in Wood Turning (1919), a woodworking manual he wrote with Archie S. Milton. Library and catalog records identify him as born in 1893, but readily available biographical details beyond that are scarce.

The book itself gives the clearest sense of his contribution. Written for high school pupils, it presents woodturning as a practical craft to be learned step by step, with attention to tool control, design, and shop discipline. That emphasis suggests Wohlers was involved in the kind of manual training or industrial arts teaching that was expanding in American schools in the early twentieth century.

Because so little confirmed personal information is easily available, his reputation rests mainly on the usefulness of this surviving text. For readers interested in the history of craft education, his work offers a direct window into how woodworking was taught to beginners more than a century ago.