My mother used to make dill pickles in a crock all the time.
You need a basement that is cool (around 65 degrees is ideal, she would have said), and a ceramic crock. (She used a 5 gallon crock.)
Fill the crock up to 3/4 full with cucumbers, add pickling liquid (at room temperature) and seasonings. (She used dill and some lump alum and sometimes a clove or two of garlic.)
Cover the pickles with a ceramic or glass plate that just barely fits in the crock and weigh that down with a clean jar filled with water. Cover the crock with a towel.
After a few days, you may get some scum on the top, skim it off, wash the plate and jar, and weigh the pickles down again.
They'll be at the 'sampling' point in about 2 weeks, and fully pickled in 4-6 weeks.
Her recipe for pickling liquid was:
2 quarts water
1 quarts white vinegar
3/4 cup pickling salt
She would bring this to a boil, then let it cool for crock pickles. When hot pack canning pickles, she'd use it without letting it cool.
However, I usually increase the amount of vinegar by a half cup, because I think 50 years ago when she was making pickles vinegar was a bit more acetic than it is today.
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