What happened to www.multi-tool.org?

[MiniChamp]

Some years ago there was a freely accessible website called "The Multi-Tool Museum" at http://www.multi-tool.org. It has been mentioned here several times, over the years, most notably in this 2010 thread. Putting any hard feelings about it aside, for a moment, I think that it had some interesting content, including scans of several old catalogs that I haven't seen elsewhere. In recent months, if I attempt to access this site, I'm redirected to https://accounts.google.com to sign in to a google account in order "to continue to Google Sites." Signing in doesn't help me, however: I'm denied access with the message "You need permission." In other words, it looks from my end like this website is now some sort of a restricted google site that I cannot access. My questions are:
(1) Can other people still access this site?
(2) If the answer to (1) is yes, how can one gain access?
(3) If the answer to (1) is no, what happened to this site?

[ReamerPunch]

 

[Steinar]

$ whois multi-tool.org
[Querying whois.iana.org:43 'multi-tool.org']
[Redirected to whois.pir.org]
[Querying whois.pir.org:43 'multi-tool.org']
[whois.pir.org]
Domain Name: MULTI-TOOL.ORG
Registry Domain ID: D144867629-LROR
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.enom.com
Registrar URL: http://www.enom.com
Updated Date: 2018-10-15T20:40:27Z
Creation Date: 2007-04-28T20:35:08Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2019-04-28T20:35:08Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date:
Registrar: eNom, Inc.
Registrar IANA ID: 48
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@enom.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.4252982646
Reseller:
Domain Status: ok https://icann.org/epp#ok
Registrant Organization: Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc.
Registrant State/Province: WA
Registrant Country: US
Name Server: DNS1.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server: DNS2.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server: DNS3.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server: DNS4.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server: DNS5.NAME-SERVICES.COM
DNSSEC: unsigned
URL of the ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form https://www.icann.org/wicf/)
>>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2018-10-21T11:40:15Z <<<

For more information on Whois status codes, please visit https://icann.org/epp

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The Internet Archive might be your best chance at accessing the old contents if the owner has picked up his toys and left the playground. I suspect it's basically orphaned because of lost interest or inability to build a community.

Edit: Had a brainfart looking up the whois record.

[Grant Lamontagne]

As I recall, he never had any interest in running or maintaining the site, he just wanted to make a splash and make himself feel superior to everyone else.  I am not surprised the site is gone, but I guess I am surprised that he kept it going as long as he did.

Def

[dks]

Tell us more.....    

[Poncho65]

I had forgotten that site existed  I remember a search engine taking me there a time or 2 back years ago when I was on different computers and I was all Where is everything
 

[MiniChamp]

Thanks a lot for the responses, particularly,

The Internet Archive might be your best chance at accessing the old contents

Indeed! By checking this archive, I learned some interesting things: It looks like the last real snapshot of this site was made on February 1, 2017 and is available at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170201162814/http://www.multi-tool.org:80/
Unfortunately, only a small portion of the contents of the original site is available there. Later "snapshots" (starting on May 27, 2017) seem to be just redirections to https://sites.google.com/a/multi-tool.org/museum/blog, which is what I was also getting in recent months, so it looks like the site effectively died sometime between February to May of last year.

Some interesting information that I did manage to obtain from the snapshot is that much of the content that I found to be the most interesting on this site has been added in what appears to be the very last update of it on April 9, 2016. The last post is from this date and it says: "Thank you to Charley Cioffero who generously provided scans of 1968, 1974, 1977, and 1979 Hoffritz Catalogs.  The catalogs have a lot of information about Victorinox Swiss army knives, plier knives and wrench knives.  A great resource!" These catalogs are indeed quite interesting, IMO, and I think that it would be good to have them publicly available on SAKWiki or otherwise. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, they are not available as part of the archive snapshots.

This leads me to the following questions: Who is this Charley Cioffero? Any chance of getting him to make the scans of these catalogs available right here on MTo?