2 degrees off" is exactly what happened to me with a cheap gauge last spring. I spent a whole weekend fighting mine, checking the blade, the fence, everything, then finally took a caliper to the gauge's bar and found it was twisted, not just bowed. The whole thing was machined so poorly that the slots weren't even parallel to each other, so no amount of adjusting would ever fix it. I was so mad because I'd already planned a whole cabinet project around those cuts and had to redo half the panels. Now I just use a speed square for rough stuff and save up for the good tools, even if it means waiting an extra month. Cheap measuring stuff is the worst kind of false economy, honestly.

Ha, my first pour ever ended up looking like a melted birthday cake too. I figured a 3x5 pad would be simple, but the cheap stakes I used just folded over like wet cardboard. I ended up screwing a 2x6 to the slab to fake a straight edge, then just troweled the hell out of it. It's not square, it's not level, but it holds my gas grill and hides the mess with a rug. Ugly edges are just character, or at least that's what I tell myself every time I look at it.