Holly is an absolute pig to process.
The traditional way is to fell the tree in the very depths of winter (the discolouring bugs are dormant during frosts), get it up off the ground immediately (some of the bugs are soil borne), plank and dry it as quickly as possible (all the bugs need a moisture content of about 20% or more). I know some people who add another step, slathering the planked boards with Dettol...I kid you not!
The problem is even following this regime to the letter doesn't guarantee success, furthermore fast drying will give you a huge wastage due to warping and splits. And bleaching partly contaminated boards with a two part bleach mix is a bit hit and miss too, I've tried it, and the boards still looked a bit grey and lifeless.
My stock of Holly, which I mainly use for inlay, stringing, and drawer pulls, is now running very low. Here are my final two decent boards,
So last year I put the word out amongst likely timber yards I know and on a couple of forestry web sites, offering top prices for clean boards, the general response has been that this winter in the UK has just been too warm to produce any clean Holly at all. I'll probably now import a few boards of Holly from some of the US timber yards who specialise in it. But that will be expensive and there's no guarantee that their definition of "clean white boards" matches my definition!
It's easy to see why many makers have abandoned Holly and use "Arctic Sycamore" instead.
