Trapezoidal in shape and just under 1.7 metres long, it tapers from a relatively broad base up to a narrow head. What sets it apart from the many worn slabs that litter medieval Irish church floors is a single incised image carved near the lower end: an axe.

The axe is not decorative in any conventional funerary sense. According to T. J. Westropp, writing in 1900, local tradition held that the slab marked the burial place of a carpenter who died after falling from the abbey roof during the medieval period. Whether the carving was cut to identify his trade, to memorialise the circumstances of his death, or simply because an axe was the tool most associated with the man, the tradition gives the image an unusually direct quality. It is a working man's grave marker, in a building otherwise associated with the Franciscan order and the powerful MacNamara family who funded its construction in the fifteenth century. A second graveslab lies immediately to the east of this one, the two stones keeping a quiet proximity on the transept floor.

Quin Abbey is largely intact and accessible to visitors, which means the slab is not difficult to find once inside the church. It lies at the threshold of the south transept, so it is easy to walk past without looking down. The incised axe is on the lower portion of the stone, and the carving is shallow enough that low or raking light makes it considerably easier to read.