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I attached the fretboard temporarily with little studs under a few fret slots then cut out the neck shape, flushed up the edges to the fretboard on the belt sander and began carving the neck as a demonstration for somebody. It was a bit short notice so I did not route the truss rod slot and I did not glue the fretboard down so that I could go back later and do the slot. Now that I'm faced with it, I'm wondering how on earth I'm going to put a slot down the middle without the straight non tapered edge that the previous blank provided. Any ideas how I might do this? Is this neck screwed?

I would cut out a length of plywood at an angle of (90 degrees - the tapered angle) and use it as a guide against the fence on a router table.

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Put a guide bushing on your router and cut a guide slot in a piece of plywood the size of your guide bushing. Clamp the neck to the plywood with the neck centered on the slot and the end of the slot where you want the end of the truss rod to be. Take a few router passes and cut to depth.

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EddieLee

Precisely how I used to do it, EXCEPT for one minor detail. I made the template building even simpler. If I want a 1/2" "slot", I take two pieces of wood that are straight and glue them together with 1/2" blocks between them. It just makes these kinds of templates easier to build, especially for odd sizes you don't have a bit for. For example, it took me about 2 minutes to make my routing template for a Tele control cavity.

I practically did what both of you suggested on my first guitar I ever built. I cut and shaped the neck because I was a newb and then afterwards realized I made the mistake of not cutting the truss channel before doing so. So I used a template I made and used a router with bit with a guide bearing. I now do the channel before shaping...Mike

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In my case, I started going down that path because I accidentally glued the headstock ears on before cutting the slot. Didn't seem like a problem until I tried to cut the slot on the router table. Woops...now what? I don't do it like that anymore, but I still keep the jig around just in case.