U.S. patent application No. 528,043, filed Aug. 31, 1983, teaches the use of a flexible magnetized layer (e.g., the material commercially designed "Plastiform" available from Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, Saint Paul, Minn.) to magnetically hold and drive flexible sheets of coated abrasive material containing ferromagnetic material. Typically the magnetized layer is incorporated in a back up pad wherein it is attached to one surface of a layer of resiliently compressible foam, the back up pad either being adapted to be manually manipulated or having a rigid backing plate adapted to be driven by a drive motor attached to an opposite surface of the layer of foam so that the motor can be used to drive the pad and thereby the abrasive against a surface to be abraded, while the layer of foam affords applying resilient pressure between the abrasive and the surface to be abraded.
The flexible magnetized layer can securely hold the abrasive sheets in place to abrade a workpiece while the back up pad is being used manually or driven by the motor, however, the material of the magnetized layer is somewhat friable and thus the edge of the magnetized layer can be worn away during use.