Ice water, at best, is only good for crisping up a cucumber if its limp. Its used to get it to become crisp again so it will be better texture in a salad or eaten fresh. It has no affect on the canning process. Another way to help keep them crisp is to 'push the envelope' a little in teh canning process. I don't add any water to my vinegar based pickle juices, so I feel that a shorter process time is safe enough to do, provided you have cold packed the cukes in the jars and pour the boiling brine over them, cap, and then process. A full vinegar at 5% brine with salt is quite safe for most anything that is harmful in a home canning process. I only do them 5 minutes for quarts. Any longer, and the cukes start to break down quickly. Others might disagree, but if you realize that with dangerous things like botulism, around, and a pickle sitting in a 5% vinegar, I seriously doubt if there would be anything that could contaminate it, unless that was some kind of bad chemical, which would make it a poison.

There are a number of pickle recipes that do call for an ice water soak in the first stage. Here's an example of a popular USDA recipe you see on many Extension sites; it's a darned good Bread N' Butter-style pickle.

CROSSCUT PICKLE SLICES

Yield: 7 pints

Cucumbers, medium sized (about 6 lbs.), sliced 4 quarts
Onions (12 to 15 small white, about 1 lb.), sliced 1 ½ cups
Garlic cloves 2 large
Salt 1/3 cup
Ice, crushed or cubes 2 quarts (2 trays)
Sugar 4 ½ cups
Turmeric 1 ½ teaspoons
Celery seed 1 ½ teaspoons
Mustard seed 2 tablespoons
Vinegar, white 3 cups

Wash cucumbers thoroughly, using a vegetable brush; drain on rack. Slice unpeeled cucumbers into 1/8-inch to ¼-inch slices; discard ends. Add onions and garlic.

Add salt and mix thoroughly; cover with crushed ice or ice cubes; let stand 3 hours. Drain thoroughly; remove garlic cloves.

Combine sugar, spices, and vinegar; heat just to boiling. Add drained cucumber and onion slices and heat 5 minutes.
Pack hot pickles loosely into clean, hot pint jars to ½ inch of top. Adjust jar lids.

Process in boiling water for 10 minutes (start to count processing time as soon as water in canner returns to boiling). Remove jars. Set jars upright to cool.

Note: Sugar may be reduced to 4 cups, if a less sweet pickle is desired.

Carol

It is often recommended to soak cucumbers in ice water for 4 or 5 hours prior to making pickles. This makes sense if you have experienced how cucumbers can become slightly (or more than slightly) flacid after harvesting due to dehydration.

Soaking gets them back to a nice, fresh, crisp, fully hydrated condition from which the pickling process can proceed (assuming they were not in bad condition to start with). In many cases pickling involves osmosis of the ingredients, so the starting condition of the cucumbers is important.

Jim