We present early results from a lattice QCD study seeking a bound $H$-dibaryon using $N_f=2$ flavors of $O(a)$ improved Wilson fermions and a quenched strange quark. We compute a matrix of two-point functions using operators consisting of the two independent local products of six positive-parity-projected quarks with the appropriate quantum numbers, which belong to the singlet and 27-plet irreducible representations of flavor SU(3). To expand this basis, we also independently vary the quark-field smearing, and apply a new scheme to reduce the noise caused by smearing. We then find the ground-state mass by solving the generalized eigenvalue problem. We show results from ensembles with pion masses 451 MeV and 1 GeV, and compare with other lattice calculations.