I miss the bad old days when there were all CMU foundations and tile walls, every hardware store and lumberyard yard bought trowels 12 at time in a size, and you pick the bend the was the closest to your old one. Don't be afraid to heat the tang and bend the trowel to your needs. Weeks of break in can be eliminated by some carefull power sanding of the cutting edges to "sharpen" them, use a broke in trowel as a pattern, Many new trowels are too pointy for example, and won't furrow a brick bed joint sufficiently with out months of wear or a few minutes of careful cutting and grinding...
I tell all my apprentices to always carry extra "show" stopping tools, I.e. two trowels, usually a wide heel block trowel,and a narrow heel brick/veneer trowel. 2 jointers, 2 levels, 2 string lines, pencils...etc.
Working on sesmic or prison walls(rebar forrests) a low lift handle with very little angle is handy for spreading the block faces with out as much knuckle busting.
Old M-towns would only last a year on the line... now with their improved steel( still shy of Rose's quality) they'll go almost 2 years before being demoted to bucket/mixer trowels(chop saw 2-3" of the point off @ about 80 degrees angle, cleans mixers & buckets out faster, very handy on a ladder patching/tucking.
Rose are well worth the tiny cost extra, I'll love whipping out my 13" Narrow heel covering three big hole brick at a go, or smoking some kid to the center of a block wall with wide heel 12" Rose(the "corn shovel")
Unfortunately Spec Mix that isn't properly mixed or PCL with out air entrainment isn't very friendly to large trowels/carpel tunnel, the money makers stay in the bag on most commerical jobs. Instead the 11.5"long old brick and 10.5"long old block trowels come off the bench for another season. The crappier the mortar/labor, the shorter the trowel, I've gotten down to 8.5" patch trowels on some rat jobs.
When hiring just looking at the wear patterns of the mechanics tools can help separate the boots from the journeymen.
Nothing is as silly as a level with dirty lenses, or someone not spending the 10$ for green tinted vials that works inside.... Any one using a level with a "bad" bubble needs a b slap, Kite string, or a corn cobb hairless brush, if you can't afford a decent set of tools, its time to move on to a new trade or quit the crack pipe.
I was taught that striking one's level INSTEAD OF THE UNIT with the blade of your trowel as a foolish destruction of equity, only use the crutch tip covered trowel handle on the plumb rule.... if necessary. If your arms are getting tired/sore building leads, you're spreading to much mud, or the mortars to stiff, or the brick need to be pre-wetted. Any shoe makers tapping on brick laid to a line need to return to cobbling... Using wore out trowels and cloudly--spookey levels are time and money wasters, One more Square ft. laid a day will provide you with the best/newest tools to work with, and allow one to finish the days work with out being exhausted. Why work with ca-ca, when quality pays?
On OP, the wood W Rose handles are about an inch longer when new, and last as long as the blade with the use of crutch tips,
the leather trowel handle are pretty, but all the ones I've owned wear down to an unconfortablely small diameter after a year or two or three....and are only ~5" long, the extra inch of the wood allows me to tap closer to my level when lead building. For the glove free crowd the plastic handle extension over the "Riser" part of the tang is nice in the cold wet days of spring and fall