I'm not sure about apt-build but I have been able to successfully rebuild debian packages using:
Code:
apt-get build-dep packagename
apt-get source packagename
cd packagename
dpkg -rfakeroot -b
That will basically download a source debian package and make sure you have all the dependencies required to build it, and then you use dpkg to actually build it in a fakeroot (make sure you have fakeroot installed).
I've been able to successfully rebuild Debian unstable packages that aren't in Ubuntu repositories that way (like cegui and ogre) by adding the deb-src for the debian unstable repository to my sources.list and doing the above. So far I've only done it on amd64, but it works the same everywhere (I wanted amd64 packages, which is why I had to build from source).
[Edit] Forgot to mention, you can add/change/remove whatever you want before you rebuild the package with dpkg. It's probably a good idea to update the changelog and info files in the debian folder (maybe set yourself as the maintainer of this version).
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