Vinegar works great, let soak for a while. You do need to rinse the vinegar out of the iron after it has soaked long enough to release the lime deposits. Hold the hot iron over the sink (don't touch sink) and use the button for puffs of steam repeatedly. Fill with clear water and do the same repeatedly until no more junk comes out. Test ironing on fabric you don't care if it gets ruin to see if the iron is clean and no more junk to spit out.

I have both a Naomoto gravity fed iron and a Laurastar S4 and a Miele rotary iron. I iron all my sheets and clothing. I love the Laurastar. I found it on ebay for a great price and it needed a new board. I like it better than the Naomoto for two reasons: 1. I can move it to any room in the house or any spot in a room and use it without a problem. The Naomoto has the gravity feed that needs to be raised up higher than the ironing board. This limits where I can move it too. 2. The iron on the Laurastar is much lighter than that of the Naomoto. I have had the Naomoto for about 6years and learned about it from someone on this forums. It irons wonderfully and will be traded to a friend when I am ready to get rid of it. The Laurastar is an all in one piece and is a vacuum board and iron combined. It irons my clothes wonderfully. The rotary iron is used for sheets and larger items like that. I also use to iron pants and skirts. Good luck!

I have a Sunbeam that is probably less than a year old, and I am not happy with it's steam, either. Like someone said, when it decides to steam it is incontinent, and hot water dripping on my feet is not the most fun thing. I got it at Bed, Bath & Beyond and chose it over a similarly-priced Rowenta b/c of all the bad things I've heard about them. I think I'll just pour out the water and go back to the spray bottle method. The iron weighs less that way anyway! :) The thing that aggravates me is you can't find an iron with a nice point in front any more. Probably some goofy government safety regulation, but it sure isn't easy to press open a seam any more. Maybe that's why I stopped sewing clothes. Donna

No, we had a separate steamer that burned out, so we used the Sapporo held sideways AS a steamer. I don't know about a special ironing board, but I have one here at home that isn't solid, it looks like metal mesh kind of and I have double padding under the cover. Any board will have some holes, but the more it can "breathe", the better if you use a lot of steam. I don't know what you mean about steam vents. Can you send me a link to what you're looking at? If you mean on the bottom of the iron near the point, then yes, it's fine. The idea is to press in that direction, lead with steam, dry with the rest, though if you have the teflon sole plate, it's vented all over and spreads the steam evenly. And I really do recommend that plate, it won't interfere with your steam in the least bit and will keep you from burning anything.