What is the proper way to hold the masonry trowel?

Your not troweling enough glass thinset onto the wall. The thinset should be creamy and troweled evenly most people hold the trowel to flat or use to small of a trowel you also could lightly coat the back do the tile to give it a good mechanical bond

with high temp refractory mortar for fireplaces

A trowel is usually used for planting bulbs and small rooted plants into a garden, I suppose on a relatively small area you could use it to cultivate (turn over the soil) but it would become hard work if you had more than a square metre or so to do. Trowels are a garden essential and they have a multitude of uses as you will find out if you purchase one.

is the recess deep enough on the bed and perp joints if so is the mortar the right consistency.
a little tip is to wet the joints with water before jointing. it stop the mortar drying out to quick

Yes. a pool trowel has round blade so it will not dig into wet concrete. A step trowel is to make round edges on stairs (mainly) because there is a 90 degree bend in the centre of the blade.

There are ones where the operator rides on and others where the operator walks behind.

Power trowels are used "to apply a smooth finish to concrete slabs" (wikipedia).

Lowes or most hardware stores im sure its just bees wax

A jointer has 2 uses. 1. it is used to make the edges of boards straight. If you look down the edge of any board, you will see that they are not straight. This is called a crown. by feeding the board threw the jointer, you will take the high ends down to make the board straight. This is necessary, excuse the spelling, for glue ups. 2. It is also used to flatten out a board. Same as the edge, the face could have a cup. By sending the face through the machine, this will make the board flat. Then you send it through the thickness planer to make the board symetrically even. You can use the jointer to make rabbets also, but there are other machine that will do the job better and faster, such as a router or a table saw, with or with out a dado blade.