Hi,
Stupid questions show wise procedure, eh!
I got that too, about 0.9V at 0.5A, the 4007 should be fine, it's about the right voltage drop, unless you know you will have large surge currents. An alternative is something like the 1N5408, that has much thicker leads, but it only drops about 0.7V at 0.5A...
You could combine a rectifier and a Schottky in series to get approx 1 - 1.2V, not sure if there are special reasons not to do that.
Just in case: if the circuit operating temperature is known, and not going to get extremely hot, fine, as diodes have poor tempco performance compared to transistors.
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...I can't help but think, don't know what a waste of invested time searching for a suitable part it could turn out to be, but what about going from "poor man's" to more sophisticated solution and splashing out on a suitable LDO, as usually drop out is influenced by a) load and b) Vin - Vout, and in your case b) is only about 1V..., and if a suitable LDO showed up, then the thick battery wire to thin diode lead problem can be eliminated by wide PCB track(s) ((and possibly also adding a suitable screw or spring clamp connector block)).