I've been working out a jig for this. Here are the things that I think are important:
1. Conceptually, the jig works best if you use both faces of the jig. When you are drilling the holes into the fingerboard, you drill down through one face of the jig, but when you use the jig to drill the matching holes in the neck, you drill down through the opposite face of the jig. You can use just one face if you are drilling the index holes at the center line, but I won't be able to do that, because my truss rod is in the way. Since my holes will be offset from the center line, I need to use both faces of the jig, as I just described, to keep the holes lined up precisely. Putting the index holes a small distance from the outer edge of the truss rod slot (maybe 1/8") makes sense to me. If you go too far out toward the edge, the depth of the index hole becomes a factor to worry about.
2. Since I will be using both faces of the jig, whatever bushing I use for the index holes need to sit flush with both faces of the jig. In other words, I have to use steel bushings that are no thicker than the jig.
3. The jig has to reference off of the nut position and the center line. If I want to make all fingerboards the same exact size, I can just line up the edges and not worry about the center line, but that feels unrealistic to me. Not all my necks will wind up the same size. But I can use the same jig for all fingerboards (within reason) if I reference off the nut position and the center line. This increases the importance of accurate markings for both of those references, on all three parts: the neck, the fingerboard, and the jig.
4. Making the index pins out of short stubs of 1/8" wooden dowels makes the most sense to me. 1/8" bushings are easy to get, as are 1/8" dowels. They are small enough to not take up a lot of room, and large enough to provide solid indexing.
I can post photos after I put this together, but these are my design considerations so far.
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